


Thornbush

by ghostystripes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Love at First Sight, Obsessive Behavior, Older Woman/Younger Man, Slow Burn, Stalking, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:20:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26041048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostystripes/pseuds/ghostystripes
Summary: You never knew that gloomy wild child with the dagger and undercut was hopelessly in love with you.~~Pieces of your personal history and your encounters with an obsessive, love-stricken runt.
Relationships: Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin) & Reader, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Reader, Levi/Reader
Comments: 38
Kudos: 205





	1. Intro

You’d been in the Underground for nearly a decade—a tired, wary young woman nearing her mid-twenties.  
You kept your spindly hair long and your visits as a reputable nurse longer.

Yet, as you tread home on nights when crime and cruelty festered as they did in such a place as the Underground—a stray knife would never find your neck, nor would a calloused hand reach roughly into your shallow pockets.

You never noticed.

You never knew that gloomy wild child with the dagger and undercut was hopelessly in love with you.

It was that boy you couldn’t stand. He had a startlingly filthy mouth and these odd, unblinking eyes—slim as a wolf’s and just as silver. That boy; he was the source of nearly half the stab wounds you had patched up; red stains upon your hands, crust underneath your nailbed.

You couldn’t stand that boy--that thug.

That _Levi_.


	2. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’ll only accept death if they can catch you. 
> 
> IF they can catch you.

“You remember the _fastest_ warrior, right?” Zeke asked, the question pointed toward anyone. 

The campfire belched a few sparks, flickering against his spectacles. Bertholdt poked at the flames with a stick, and his eyes darted up to find Annie’s features. They were blank, vapid; illuminated by the flame.

Reiner sat across from them, heavy shoulders curled forward. He was frowning, and his arms crossed tighter around his torso.

“She’s dead,” he replied dryly.

The fire belched another spark.

Zeke shrugged at the remark, sipped at his metal mug.

“I know.”

* * *

_The sand scorched the bottom of your feet like tiny embers. The way it shifted beneath you was so unfamiliar and terrifying._

_**Sand**._

_After the short, rolling tumble, you’d lost both your boots._

_How could you possibly walk upon the massive, sun-baked heaps of dust?_

_How could you possibly **run**?_

_You continued to distance yourself from the wall, even though, no matter how hard you moved your legs, you could still smell the salt of the sea behind you._

_But—somehow, you ran, and you ran **fast**._

_Finally, it came—the explosion, the eruption of blinding light, the heat you could feel on the back of your tingling neck...even from a half-mile out._

_The earth soon began to rumble with a multiple of colossal footsteps._

_You **ran**._


	3. I.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so the runt wolf fell madly for her—the auburn fox, timid and hunted.

_Yes, the Ackerman clan was strong, powerful—more than any other family among humanity._

_But they weren’t rulers._

_Always, they dedicated their power to another._

_Always._

_For Kenny, it was to Uri._

_For Mikasa, it was to Eren._

_For Levi...it was to you._

* * *

“Stop it!” You shrieked.

The boy.

He was hardly fifteen, short and scrawny; no muscle, but sinew.

And yet, there he was—beating a man to within an inch of his life. 

The man himself, fat, slow and middle-aged, bellowed up at you through broken teeth, bloody stumps of red and pulp trickling down his split lip.

He had only yanked at your wrist, a quick tug of your thin body backward.

“Oi! Ye still haven’t paid me back for lending you them jars!”

Of course you hadn’t. They were free, yes, as long as his wobbling gut was crushing your body into a mattress, his oily hands tearing off your knickers.

So, when you declined that insinuation, the jars for your medicinal ointments suddenly sprouted a steep price tag.

But when the man’s snarl reached your ear, it’d been too late when you turned your head to face him.

Levi had already seen the red—soon to blossom into bruises—on your wrists from where the crooked merchant had grabbed you.

“I said stop it!” You shrieked again, throwing your hands upon the youth’s stiffened shoulders to pull him away.

The boy whipped around, eyes wild.

He dropped the man immediately, who, with a wet thud, fell unconscious into a pool of his own blood.

Small, bloody hands—bright and sticky red, found your wrists with such startling gentleness that you pulled away.

Levi’s eyes were settling into yours, the edge evaporating with a single blink. He reached up for your wrist again, insistently, and gave them a once over with those strange, silver-blue eyes.

His short black hair glistened with sweat.

“Are you hurt?” He asked, voice low, toneless.

You stared and stared at him, down at him, rather—a wannabe nurse, no, a shrink at best, too tall at 5’10 and too tired at twenty-five.

You just stared at him, at his bloody slacks, at the knowing crowd that had gathered, and the eerie swiftness in which he tucked away his blade.

That day you realized it with utter certainty.  
Levi Ackerman terrified you more than anything in that Underground world.

But you didn’t know.

You didn’t know he loved you.

More than _anything_.

* * *

_The runt with his woman again_ , Kenny mused. He almost sneered, but thought better of it. 

Who _wouldn’t_ be half-insane to cling to the last beautiful thing in their life?

Lowering his head, Kenny allowed his hat’s brim to cast his own silver-blue eyes into shadow. 

He turned away from the crowd and his brawling nephew.

The tall man in the longcoat vanished into the streets, hands in his coat pockets, conscience untethered. 

Levi watched him go. 


	4. II.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At fourteen you discovered what it was like to become cattle.

“How are you feeling? You asked her.

The two of you sat awkwardly in the wagon, rocking and bumping along with the stones and bends in the road. The horses galloped on at a steady pace.

Along the sides of the wagon, others rode by with their spruce-green winged capes billowing in the breeze.

Your friend had turned to look at you.

In her slim amber eyes, you could read every morsel of the history you both shared—that she _knew_ you both shared.

“I’m better. Don’t worry about it.”

Ymir smiled, then—the sharp, upward curve of her lips that you’d come to adore on her freckled face.

She gave you that same smile when you first encountered her—a nude, young woman crushing walnuts on a stump in the middle of the woods. 

Surely you had looked just as strange to her.

An older child, but a child nonetheless, with matted hair, wide, terrified eyes and a belly on the brink of distention. 

It didn’t take long, though, for you both to realize you hailed from the same land. 

The Scout Regiment had rescued you two “stragglers” outside the wall—you, a skeleton-thin, barefoot teen, and a young woman, Ymir, who’d been wearing nothing but pine branches.

Though cases of stragglers were rare, the government noted they all tended to have no memory of ‘how’ they came to be outside the Walls.

This began with the “Grisha Yeager Case”. To keep order within the walls, the council in Sina deemed all straggler “motivations” to be a result of delirium.

But you and Ymir both knew the truth. Neither of you were delirious.

Inside the wagon, Ymir gave your shoulder a quick thump. You glanced up from shamefully observing your grubby hands, broken and stubby nails.

Ymir whispered, low, quick. 

“Look!” 

From two miles out, you could see her.

For the first time in your life your eyes caught a glimpse of what was only described by words in Marleyan upper-school textbooks.

 _Maria_.


	5. III.

The stairway had no toll when someone needed to be buried.

Levi remembered the day as a color—icy white.

He was clinging to Kenny’s long coat, a tiny fist balled into a clump of blood-stained fabric.

It only took two men to carry Kuchel’s pinewood box up the stairs.

Levi waited at the bottom, staring upward with Kenny. Up into that other, upper-world—ice white, surreal, and empty.

As soon as the heels of the undertakers vanished out of sight, Levi, a starving shrew of a child, froze with the cruel white of the upper world's winter.

He stared emptily into the void, blinking back tears with the few flecks of snow wandering down the stairway.

Kuchel was gone, and Levi was stuck.

But then.

Someone was coming. It wasn’t his mother returning to him, no. 

Just someone else.

Her feet were soft and steady in her descent, long skirts billowing with the wind behind her, lovely hands clasped around a bunch of lilies—wet with dew.

The white of the snowy winter faded as you stepped lower, and your face came into view.

Oh, rapture.

Oh, rapture.

“Ah?” grunted Kenny, somewhat annoyed with your unwelcome intrusion.

You slid the bundle of lilies into his arms, kept your head low and sincerely contrite.

“I said...I’m sorry for your loss.”

Kenny replied with a wide, terrifying grin. He thumped a long hand over Levi’s head, ruffled his hair.

“I don’t see much sympathy for Kuchel’s crowd.”

You didn’t reply, only nodded once and turned to continue on your way downward.

Levi was stuck staring—though he was certain you hadn’t even looked at him.

“You’re that new nurse, right?” Kenny asked after you.

“I mix tonics and midwife occasionally. Nothing special.”

And then you vanished into the Underground’s depression and murky shadow.

Levi was still stuck, but not in the way he had been, watching his mother go up.

After you came descended, like some misbegotten angel, it was you he’d been stuck on since.

* * *

It wasn’t your height that made you odd.

Rather, it was one of your most attractive qualities. Your frame was tall, slim—frail, and delicate like the body of a dancer.

The bangs of your (h/c) hair bounced lovelily with each step while the thick braid cascading down your back always caught up in a soft swishing movement.

No, outwardly, you were exceptional.

It was just your voice that caused eyes to double-take back toward your lips.

Even though you were tall and lovely, your voice carried a pitch as high and keening as a child’s. In normal conversation, you communicated with a hoarse squeak—a part of you that took many patients a few minutes to get used to.

Some days when you were idle enough to stand and stare out the window, you’d grin affectedly as you recalled the schoolhouse choir from when you were a girl.

You weren’t able to carry a tune to save your life—a long, awkward crow among the canaries.

One day you’d come to find that there was one who adored your every breath—who’d happily press kisses down your neck at each word you spoke; no matter how raspy, no matter how squeaky.

To Levi, your voice was the only thing that could make his heart quicken.


	6. IV.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If things had been different, you’d probably be a Marleyan duchess with powerful sons and trophied daughters.

You came from a family of nobles, from a life of pomp, affluence, and ease. But there was one bitter droplet in the cream of your upper class childhood. You and your family were of Eldian descent.

Some generations ago your great-grandfather had served in the Warrior Unit—thereby granting his family, _your_ family, the Quincys, honorary Marleyan citizenship.

After your great grandfather, came your grandfather; he was a young man in the world when he’d expanded the family textile business to every corner of the continent—a Marleyan privilege and merit.

Then from your grandfather came your father and his brothers—the two younger tightening the monopoly of Quincy Co. as your father bestrode the political sphere, heaping up favorable influence, and became mayor of the prominent city, Albion, the place of your birth.

Albion was where you were schooled, curled up in cafes with a book while your socialite mother and glamorous older sister Belle attended evening galas. Your brother, Liam, you absolutely adored—handsome, full of wit, and gentle-spirited. It was the latter part of him that made you doubtful when he was away with your uncles, his soul being harrowed by the pursuit of the family company, the pursuit of the _coin_.

But Liam was home every Sunday—with candy and new books; your favorite had been “History of the Walls”.

All was sweet, and all was beautiful during those first twelve years of your life; you wanted for nothing.

But then your father’s political influence began to wane. And as it began to wane, dissonance grew among the people in Albion, growing loud enough to draw opinions in from other Marleyan cities.

Some sided with your father, some—but the majority did not.

You began to notice how the division was taking a toll on your mother. She stopped going to balls, her dinner parties ceased, and tailors suddenly “forgot” to include extra ribbons and lace on her gowns.

Belle was engaged and moving to the seaside and Liam was away on business more and more. He even missed a Sunday when he’d been refused entry back into Albion; something about faulty papers.

All of that turmoil and you were finding yourself quite alone in the midst of it.

The dam broke the day the newspapers shed light upon your family’s Eldian heritage. The Quincy family’s artificial “honorary” Marleyan citizenship seemed to conflict with your father’s _rapidly_ declining public persona.

There were riots, mobs at the gates of your home, threats to rename and redistribuirte Quincy Co. and to send _all_ of your family back to the internment zone.

But there was a way to circumvent all of that, you knew.

And father knew, too.

To this day as you live alone as a doctor behind the Walls, you pray that your father is long dead and burning in the lowest arched-burrow of hell.

With your sister Belle then pregnant with her first child, Liam ill with pneumonia and delirium, and your parents too old, it was you they offered up on a pedestal to Marley’s warrior unit.

You, and your identical twin sister Amelia.

Tributes to secure your family’s immortality.


	7. V.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’d find you again.

Levi’s trademark gaze of edge and sleep deprivation was your doing—although...not directly.

He’d done that to himself, a ritual stretching across the majority of his teens until you’d left for the Surface one day.

He’d be perched, thanks to ODM gear, high upon a ledge to peer into your curtainless window, to peer upon your resting form. It eased his mind, seeing you still, knowing you were safe as long as he watched.

So he watched all night.

There was the curve of your hips under your blankets, an arm tossed over a pillow, your hair unkempt, free of the ribbon tying it back. Sometimes there was your long, bare, beautiful thigh poking out to escape the summer heat.

It was the latter image Levi would summon to himself in a quieter, lonely corner during his youth, head thrown back, eyes pinched shut, a hand in his trousers while the sticky warmth oozed into his shaking palms.

* * *

He was around seventeen the day you went up.

When the evening came, Levi found his ledge as usual, something that’d become as natural as walking up steps.

He sat still, solemnly, until the lights of the Underground dimmed, until every scoundrel, every prostitute, and every orphan had locked themselves away for the night.

No sooner than when the last door clicked shut, Levi began to sob into his fist, sharp, barking sobs that carried more emptiness than the howls of alley mutts.

He was unable to see through his tears into your apartment. But it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see—it was empty, bare of anything that’d suggest you’d been.

So, for the first time in years, Levi slept through the night, a small body collapsed in the cranny of some roof, shoulders trembling, eyes wet, and teeth clenched until the consciousness left him.

Since that day, no matter how many times Levi had tried to banish you from his mind, you’d come crashing back in a whirlwind more vivid than before.

You always came crashing back to him.

Whatever it took, Levi decided that last evening upon the ledge, he’d crash back to you.

Whatever it took to get papers and earn the right to live on the Surface

Whatever it took.


	8. VI.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie wasn’t the first candidate.

“Your name again?” You ask.

Those pale blue eyes are strange to you. They hold a certain steeliness and ice that’s off-putting for a young girl.

Her light hair is pulled back into a tight pigtail, her uniform holding the crisp air of MP pride.

“Annie.”

She looks right at you.

“Annie Leonhart.”

You offer her a warm, easy smile and step aside, gesturing the girl into the examination room for her checkup.

She utters a low thank you as you hold the door, and you’re thankful her quick eyes didn’t catch your quivering fingers.

 _Leonhart_.

* * *

You and your twin sister were the fastest out of all the female candidates, setting a margin too wide to be bridged.

The only speed equal to yours was Amelia’s.  
The only speed equal to Amelia’s was yours.

The corporals were pleased. They had two viable candidates to inherit the Female Titan.

But there could only be one.

Only one.


	9. VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You couldn’t hardly handle him as a boy. There’s no way you could handle him as a man.

No contagion.

The last child you delivered was now a fat, noisy, and hearty three-month-old boy.

You haven’t been needed.

With what little you could save during a plague drought was dwindling fast.

For any population it was good should a physician be out of work.

But you had to eat. You were a body that needed food just like the rest crammed into that underground cesspit.

So as you stalked the tiny upper room of your living space, you stared emptily at the boxes of medical supplies under your bed.

Medicinal herbs and bandages wouldn’t make a decent meal—even if it had been three days; even if you _were_ trembling with weakness.

You needed money, yes, but could you really shove coins into your mouth and chew them?

No.

You needed food.

* * *

He was a big man. Old, yet wide-framed.

His filthy white beard smelled of mildew and stale alcohol. You did what you could not to gag each time it pressed into the hollows of your thinning cheeks.

But perhaps you preferred the beard to the stench of his rotting teeth and yellowing tongue.

There wasn’t enough meat on your body to keep him from breaking your back, it felt like.

He swore and muttered as he putrid sweat dribbled onto your slight, bare breasts.

But it would be over soon.

It would be over, and you could shove the loaves of bread into your mouth, choking and hiccuping upon their warmth whilst ignoring his wheezing laughter.

“Female doctor indeed. This is all yer made fer.”

Yes, it’d be over soon.

Then the bread—the bread to make it seem as if this horror had never happened.

Just bread.  
  


* * *

Despite your hatred of the old fleabag patron, you were trying so hard to stop the bleeding.

The red slick was all over your tattered night robe, the sheets—seeping into the wooden floor.

A sopping wet mess of a psychotic runt’s tantrum.

You were half delirious yourself, weeping and swearing as you kept your hands pressed to the dead man’s gashed neck.

Levi was shouting at you; no, screaming.

He was gesturing wildly, blood on his dagger and on his boots—even trickling from his nose from where you’d knocked him away with your bony fist.

He yelled at you for pretending not to notice he existed, yelled at you selling your body, yelled at you for being so stupid with your safety that he didn’t even know how to sleep anymore.

“You need me! You need me!” He half yelled, half sobbed.

You just about lost your mind when he’d clung to you, silver-blue eyes wide and wild with tears, teeth clenched, fists clenched full of your bloodied robe.

A feral ratling.

“You thug!” You squawked in your awfully shrill voice.

“I never asked a thing of you!”

Levi continued to weep into your chest, lips pressed against the soft, sweet skin of your exposed abdomen.

“You thug!” You shrieked.

* * *

Familiar thudding feet were working their way up to your apartment room.

Yes.

Mildred, your landlady, was on her way up to throw you out.

Like many of the independent women who could no longer pay rent, she’d gather fistfuls of your hair and drag you down to the streets.

She knocked, but you knew you didn’t need to give her permission to enter.

The door opened and Mildred’s round shape filled the doorway. Her poorly drawn-on eyebrows had always been too arched, red lipstick so cheap that it looked like tomato sauce.

“I take it your nursery ‘bidness is going on quite fine then, eh?”

You turned away from your windowsill as you’d been there thinking it’d be your last time gazing out from it.

“...Pardon me?”

Mildred wasn’t amused, lips twisting into a frown as she rolled her eyes.

“I said I’ve come to let you know the down payment’s gone through. Come n’ pick up your last rent payment; don’t need it since you’ve suddenly decided to buy.”

Your mouth was wide open as Mildred turned to go, shutting the door (your door, now), quite firmly behind her.

You could make out the older woman muttering something as she clambered back down the stairs.

“ _Quick money cunt_.”

With a huff, you crossed your arms over your chest and turned to look back out the window.

A taller boy with scraggly blonde hair was just walking away from your building, an arm tossed lazily around the shoulder of another.

His jet-black hair was as neat as usual, his hands, quick and dangerous, stuffed casually into his emptied pockets.

“You thug.” You whispered, lips sliding into an unwelcome smile.


	10. VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’re nearing your mid-forties when the Female Titan ravages the Scout Regiment.
> 
> You’re too busy with wounded soldiers and plagues to be continually courted by a dangerous Captain—too close to the end of your childbearing years.
> 
> And yet he persists, resurfacing into your life like an old ache.

_You stood 14 meters tall, the visible muscles strong and tight around your gluteus and devastatingly powerful thighs._

_You were fast, ferocious, (h/c) whipping in the wind as you crushed Scouts and their horses alike beneath your crystalized feet._

_One man turned to gaze at you, mouth agape, eyes wild with terror._

_You grinned back at him, teeth caked with human entrails._

Sunlight spills into the infirmary as you wake with a shrill yelp.

Yes. You had told _them_ no, and that’s why you were banished. That’s why you were here—a doctor in Sina, foolishly awaking from a nap upon her desk.

You shift hastily at the insistent rattling on the door. You hadn’t heard it the first time.

“C-come in!” You stammer, fingers entangling themselves within the heaps of your (h/c) hair. Even as you’re sliding into your mid-forties, it’s kept its lovely sheen, only marred by a thin streak of white in the center; a small bolt of physician’s anxiety.

You’re patting down the last few wayward strands just as the door clicks open.

Boots stride across the entryway.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Y/N, pardon the intrusion.”

Your mouth slides agape as his presence suddenly fills the room. Tall and golden-haired, firm-eyed and direct.

Erwin ushers in the rest of the party with his hand.

Your voice catches in your throat like a thin caterwaul.

“Commander! I—,”

He holds up a hand and smiles at you, whole and good-natured.

“I’ve word that you’re the one of the best doctors in the Walls.”

The way his eyes cling to you—it wasn’t a compliment. It was a demand.

 _You’re one of the best doctors in the Walls. And_ _now? You’ll stand and prove it._

Erwin turns his head.

“Lay him down.”

A woman with a dark ponytail and spectacles enters next, face cracked with a devilish smile. She claps her hands once with startling enthusiasm.

“Atta boy, Captain! Careful with him, Mike! That’s one busted ankle!”

Another man enters, just about as tall as Erwin, his hair a dirtier blonde and nose jutting downward at a more dramatic angle. He was helping the last person into the room, who was noticeably shorter than everyone.

The sun struck across his jet-black hair just in time with the shriek you were swallowing.

Through the haze of blood and dirt, Levi’s eyes find yours.


	11. IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You weren’t so cruel as to just let fever eat him alive.
> 
> ...Him and his uncle both.

Grisha Yeager earned mild fame when he single-handedly stopped a rampant plague in Shiganshina.

But what of you? You were a young woman trying to stop a contagious lung infection within the poorest, dirtiest area of the Walls. You had no underlings, no help—just your own thin, quivering hands and a small journal—a few pages filled with some tricks you couldn’t hardly remember from Marley.

One of them commonly led you to the tavern in the center of the Underground. There was a bottle you could always turn to.Not for yourself—but to use as a sort of antiseptic for patients.

The citizens within the Walls, above and below, had hardly heard of such a thing. But their ignorance was justified. Using alcohol that way, was a medicinal practice from Marley.

It was a practice among the few advanced secrets stubbornly sealed within your mind. They came from days as a young girl spent volunteering in clinics during those old, endless summers in Albion.

“I’ll never know what you see in consistently purchasing one o’ the worse bottles here,” drawled the bartender. He slid one into a paper bag for you, a dark bottle with a green band around the neck.

You said nothing as you took it from him—as you usually did. It’d be like explaining automobile mechanics to a Wall cultist.

It was as you were moving toward the door, shawl loose upon your shoulders, that you heard it for sure; a miserable sound coming from the back of the tavern.

A man was trying to stop the coughs hurling up his esophagus—insistent, whooping coughs, wet with phlegm.

The plague was _everywhere_.

You turned your head and flinched at the daggerish gaze peering over. His eyes glimmered beneath the brim of his hat, the tips iconically blood stained.

Kenny Ackerman.

His stare was interrupted, then, by another series of coughs. His eyes widened as he drew a fist up to his lips—lungs heaving uncontrollably.

Across from Kenny, _he_ sat—eyes vacant with a feverish haze, a teacup of whiskey sitting untouched in his small hands.

Both of them.

You wanted to shake your head, deny it and burst out the door and into streets.

But it sat there so plainly. Them, the two people you feared and despised the most. Two unredeemable thugs—one great, one small, cutting and conniving their way through life simply because they could. 

You threw your hand firmly upon the door handle, having half a mind to just let them rot, to let Nature blow out their vicious flame.

You pressed down on the handle, hard, but you couldn’t bring yourself to open the door.

You couldn’t.

* * *

You were a regular appearance in Levi’s daydreams, though it was exaggerated. You tended to smile far more often, you smiled at him. Your hair would be done up with gold, your sweet body clothed in the billowing satin of a goddess’s cloak.

And despite the delirious heat in his temples, this daydream was plainer. You weren’t smiling, but instead stood looking down upon him with an uneasy certainty. 

“I don’t need shit from you, wench,” came his uncle’s muttering voice.

Levi looked at Kenny. How could he see you?

Levi blinked slowly when your hand found him and pulled him up to his feet. Your voice drifted in and out of his ears.

He was able made out a sharp “fine!” from your lips, something you shouted at Kenny.

Soon enough, Levi found that he was being moved toward the door by you. 

You were taking him somewhere. To heaven, perhaps?

He peered up at you, sweat sitting in beads upon his forehead, pupils dilated. He was shivering as you spoke to him.

“I’m taking you back and I’m going to have you drink something, okay? You’re running an incredibly high fever.”

Yet nothing was making sense. Why would he have a fever in heaven? That’s where he’d have to be if you were freely speaking to him. 

Something soft fell atop his shoulders then. It was light and sweet; it smelled of you. 

Levi shivered at the sensation of your shawl wrapping around him.

Your voice came again, muffled as if you were underwater. 

“I’ll deal with your uncle, later. He’s in bad shape, too.”

You stared straight ahead as the two of you traveled down the streets, winding down alleys to and fro. Levi found it more and more disappointing that heaven was looking exactly like the Underground.

When would the streets turn to gold? When would the clouds stretch all around him? When would he see his mother, white-robed and winged—welcoming the two of you with open arms. 

Levi reached up to touch your face as he often did when he dreamt of you. You’d clasp onto his hand and press it lightly to your face. You always did. 

But this time, the movement was met with a sharp pain. 

You had swatted his hand away and your eyes had flashed with earthly anger, earthly _fear_. 

“Do _not_ touch me!” You snapped.

No.

He wasn’t daydreaming.


	12. X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was true.  
> Kenny looked out for you, too.

_**Present Day** _

“Did _he_ ever touch you?”

Your finger slipped on the loose bandage, causing his foot in your lap to awkwardly shift.  
Levi jerked, flinched at the burst of ripe pain.

“Tch!”

You didn’t apologize, but readjusted the gauze and kept wrapping his injury.

Levi kept his hardened gaze on you, on the face that was so precious to him. He watched your lips, willed them to speak—waiting for an excuse to bring steel to a bastard’s jugular, even if it was _that_ bastard.

“No,” you said after some time.

Levi exhaled, let his eyes fall off your face. He replied with a soft “hm.”  
He wouldn’t have to eviscerate Kenny Ackerman after all.

At least not yet.

* * *

_**Then** _

The aura of the hoodlums at the corner table grew heavier, darker each time you returned to the tavern to pick up liquor for your tonics.

Their eyes lingered longer on your chest, watched you pass every cent of coin to the bartender.

Obviously they terrified you, this revelation that life as a young, single woman wouldn’t be all that much greater on the surface.  
Only this time, there would be no half-insane runt sprinting to your aid, eager to splash his hands with blood.

There were two men—one with a shaved, scarred head and a single earring; the other wore a scarlet headband in his dirty orange hair, wore a malevolent grin on his patchy orange stubble.

One night you awaited the worse. It was when the ginger jerked his head toward his companion, the bald one’s gaze swallowing you up as he rose, lumbered over toward where you stood.

You held your breath.

But he suddenly stopped short, eyes flickering at something behind you. You saw the man pocket his concealed knife again, pretend to stretch, and roam back over to his seat.

Before you could register the true danger, a rough hand clasped the side of your cheek, and dry, parched lips kissed into the other. Kenny grabbed your bony elbow right as you moved to knock him back.

He pushed his face into your hair, hand falling onto your shoulder to squeeze it.  
His breath hot against your ear.

“Don’t say anything, Miss Flowers. This a dangerous part o’ town—just let me do the talking,”

You watched as your would-be assailants shifted uncomfortably, kept their eyes low.

“Babe, I didn’t think I’d run into you here,” drawled Kenny, loud and direct enough for all of the patrons to get the point.

You were Kenny’s girl. You were off-limits.

“Kenny’s girl” you mused, recoiling at the thought.

The air was silent after he wrapped his arms possessively around you, walked you out into the desolate midnight street.

And so it became a strange, harrowing routine.

The moment when you thought it was over, when you were sure you’d be shoved into an unmarked carriage—to be taken off and ravaged—he’d almost materialize from the shadows, take you beneath the wing of his blood-stained trench coat.

“Oi, Oi, Oi, always wandering into trouble, eh, Miss Flowers?”

You’d always smack his hand away as soon as you escaped the glare of trouble’s eye.

“That’s not my name!”

But it would continue to be—to Kenny.

Miss Flowers. The runt’s treasure. The only person who showed any kind of fucking decency to his poor, retched sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all I’m sorry ;_;  
> I’m a full time college student and research assistant—if I had more time to write I would, BELIEVE ME 🥺
> 
> Anyway, thanks for your patience. I tried to whip up what I could 🥺


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